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Baby JLiesAbstract Urban***
Ace and what's ace here is the
shamelessness – the way 'Lies' has no compunction in swinging in with it's
heavily-harmonized chorus, latching itself to your brainstem like some kind of
synapse-leeching candiru, and then hanging around all day whilst you hum it in
shops, in the street, in your head, in your heart. As such can't call the
thumptious undertow retro but the way this gets under your skin permanent-like
is definitely from a different age. Bravo.

Dap-C & Dirty SweetMusic Game NGU***
Well it depends what you want your hip-hop
to do. If you want it to stay indoors, soundtrack your inner chaos, push your
mind into strange new places then move along, nothing to see here. If you want
hip-hop to come out of your car in big phat bass-waves, saunter your chassis
round your 'hood, attract favourable looks from the local scrunchie-wearing
trakkied-up hoi-poloi then this is just about perfect. Not a criticism. Enjoy
it.

SINGLE OF THE WEEK 1. MORCHEEBA TRIGGER HIPPIE (China)
I KNOW nothing about Morcheeba. If it was still summer, you’d
hear this as a smooth, slightly stoned shuffle across the road to the park, a
record to suck the heat out of the room. Right now, with the nights drawing in
and your breath circling in morning spirals up the misty window, it fits like a
lungful of tears. This is heavy-lidded, liquid-heady soul; a song that starts
as loud as it’s gonna get (not very) and then seems anxious to force in spaces,
black holes, like the last seconds of Eric B & Rakim’s “Follow The Leader”
with just a bit of bottleneck and the intonation “Pull the trigger/I’m a hippy”
creeping out through the sleepy beats, the sitar drones, the hanging shadows.
Think Dubstar’s “Stars”,
St.Etienne’s “Calico”, Redman’s “Green Island”, Gil Evans, Nina Simone’s “My
Man’s Gone Now”, Joyce Sims “Come Into My Life”, Baileys and the sweet taste of
hatred, the horror of strangers, mayday mayday, suggestion/assoc…

[note: For the first month I was a critic I still hadn’t really discovered what it was I wanted to say. I wasn’t given anything I could get my teeth into. Then went to see Credit To The Nation in Sheffield and this came streaming out afterwards.Now, on one level, it's a terrible piece of writing. I was 21, angry, and without a doubt back then you sometimes get the feeling that I reckon what I wanted to say was more important than what the reader might want to read. In no way is this review fair/objective. I repeatedly use the word I, and for much of the review I talk about everything EXCEPT what's meant to be under consideration (the gig). Crucially though, for me, this was a watershed moment as a writer, it was the moment when a lightbulb went off that simultaneously suggested (a) THIS is what I have to say and talk about & (b) wow, people will actually let me get away with this]

CREDIT TO THE NATION LEADMILL, SHEFFIELD
“Racial prejudice and discrimination he recognises, ar…

As part of a unit called 'Working Freelance In The Media' one of my Radio Production students decided to drag a real-life freelancer to the radio-studios at college and interview them about freelancing. Unluckily for him, and you, the freelancer he chose was me . . . . Click here to hear it.

(note - Luke Turner @The Quietus did an amazing job editing this overlong mulch down to what mattered. But this is what I had to say in full - overstressing the corporatisation of festivals without a doubt. Thank god for good editors)HOW MUCH?FIVE QUID FOR A FUCKING HOTDOG?FOUR POUND A PINT?Good bloody job I bought this bag full of sarnies &
watermelon & Tunnocks teacakes. I'M NOT LINING THEIR POCKETS. Of
course, I'd like to enjoy pop in the
modern age but unfortunately pop did a credit-check on me and it turns out my
application has been refused. So let's sit out here and smoke this joint and
sup these cans first cos the fuckers in the neon-green waistcoats and pink
lanyards are only gonna take it away from us once we get to the gate just
before they get their grope on. Lets drink now so we don't have to pay their
prices and remember why were here. I believe that somewhere in that mess of
advertising, somewhere past the noodles and the cameras and the credit-…

(note - can't imagine another mag where dissidence to 'higher ups' would be so tolerated. whole paper going mad about g-funk at the time and like a stroppy sod I have to stick my elbows out. looking back, i was wrong, snoop n dre were awesome from the off (and realness is a helluva duff thing to be boosting) but editors trusted you back then to the point where they'd be happy with a 'you're fired' interruption and then onwards)

ICE CUBE/GRAVEDIGGAZ BRIXTON ACADEMY LONDON MELODY MAKER, September 10th, 1994 TRY and tie down hip-hop with yer baggage and it always
finds a way to bust loose. Never mind asking “Has Rap Gone Too Far”, you should
be asking why rock ain’t going nowhere. Sorry, but Gravediggaz make the point;
tonight they are stunning.
When Snoop and Dre
combine their mindless vacuity of lyrics with a kinda gloopy, Reaganite
yuppiness of sound, it’s not just irresponsible, it’s a lie. It’s the ghetto as
just another capitalist terrain, an apolitical…

(Well, The Quietus did a diamond cutting job, I blogged the offcuts, thought what the hell, put the offcuts back in & here's the original. Down to you how YOU think it should've run[The title refers to my Erykah Badu piece also on the Quietus])

TEN THOUGHTS ABOUT HATE AND THE ENEMY'S "STREETS IN THE SKY"

I
blame Weller for a lot, for that fatal reformulation of 'mod' as not about
sharpness but shabbiness, not being about chasing down the hottest black music
but about shoring up the deadest white music, the prizing of authenticity and
roots as a way of masking the pastuerisation & timid thievery going on.
Fuck these tricks, I'm a real mod, a modernist, an English listener to black
America, I love blatant thievery, not this due-paying bollocks. These Parka'd
Man-U-Scholes-shirt-wearing cocks of the walk are just cocks who can barely
walk, so broken and bowed are their gaits by a lifetime's absorption of
rock'n'roll lies. OASI…